Significance of the Resettlement Scheme

Published:PravdaNos. 98 and 99, April 27 and May 1, 1913.

      Signed:V. I..

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages66-71.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Weknow that since 1905, the government, in connection with
its “new” agrarian policy in European Russia, has been making particular
efforts to promote peasant resettlement to Siberia. The landowners regarded
these resettlement schemes as a sort of opening of the safety valve, and as
a “blunting” of the agrarian contradictions in the centre of Russia.

Whathas happened as a result? Has there been a blunting or a
sharpening of contradictions following their transfer to a wider arena?

Firstof all let us cite some general figures on the resettlement of
peasants to Siberia.

From1861 to 1885 about 300,000 peasants migrated, that is, 12,000 a
year; from 1886 to 1905 the number was about 1,520,000, that is, about
76,000 a year; from 1906 to 1910 it was about 2,516,075 or about 500,000 a
year.

Thegrowth in the number of peasants resettled in the
counter-revolutionary period is enormous. Undoubtedly atemporary“rarefaction” of the atmosphere in Central Russia was bound to take place
as a result.

Butforhow longand atwhat cost?

Theanswer to this is provided by the figures showing thedropin the wave of settlers that began in 1909 and the amazinggrowthin the number of those returning. Here are the figures:

Thusthe official promoters of resettlement succeeded in rarefying the
atmosphere for something likefouryears (1906–09). Then anew crisisbegan, because the huge drop in the number of settlers
and the incredible increase in the number of “returnees”—36 per cent
and 60 per cent—without any doubt mean a crisis, and an extremely serious
one at that, one that covers an immeasurably wider arena.

Thirty-sixand 60 per cent of settlers returning means a sharpening of
the crisis in Russia and in Siberia. It is the poorest who return to
Russia, the most unfortunate, who have lost everything and are bitterly
angry. The land question must have become very acute in Siberia for it to
have become impossible, despite the efforts of the government, to
accommodate hundreds of thousands of settlers.

Thefigures quoted show without doubt, therefore, that the struggle
against the 1905 agrarian crisis in Russia by means of resettlement has
brought about apostponementof the crisis for only a very short
period and at the cost of an incomparably greater sharpening and extension
of the crisis, as at present.

Aninteresting confirmation of this conclusion drawn from dry
government statistical data is a book by Mr. A. I. Komarov, a former
official of the Forestry Department who was twenty-seven years in the
service and took a special interest in the Siberian resettlement
scheme. His book is calledThe Truth About the Resettlement Scheme(St. Petersburg, 1913. Price 60 kopeks).

Itconsists mainly of newspaper articles written by the author under a
pseudonym for the newspaperNovaya
Rus[2]between 1908 and 1910 in which, in a “jovial” manner, he
tells a story “of statespoliationor, rather, devastation of Siberian lands and forests that makes the
plunder of the Bashkirian lands that once took place seem trivial indeed”.

Theauthor’s position is that of the well-intentioned official reduced
to despair by the “resettlement muddle” (his newspaper articles bore that
title), the plunder, ruin and Impoverishment of the old inhabitants and the
settlers, “the complete disorganisation of all that is called rational
forestry”, the flight of the settlers back to Russia and the formation of
an army, “hundreds of thousands strong”, of“vagrant Russia” and, finally, the impenetrable wall of stupidity and
officialdom, the system of secret informers, the embezzling and
incompetence in the organisation of the whole business.

Despitethe fact that the articles are written in a “jovial” manner,
or ratherbecause they are, their cumulative effect is to produce
a very strong impression of the fumes, the fug, the suffocation that
surround the old feudal officialdom. Nothing but disaster can come of a new
bourgeois agrarian policy that is carried out by such means and methods and
under such circumstances and is guided by such social elements.

Hereis a picture of the journey to Siberia made in August 1910 by
Prime Minister Stolypin and Mr. Krivoshein, the Chief Administrator of
Agriculture and Land Settlement.  A speech was made from the platform of
the minister’s rail way coach at the Taiga station ... “everything is
magnificent and therefore satisfactory”.

“Thisclownish tour,” writes the old civil servant,
   “this journey so similar to that made by Catherine the Great to the south
   of Russia, with Mr. Schumann, the Resettlement and Land Administrator of
   Tomsk Gubernia, playing the role of Potyomkin on instructions from
   St. Petersburg ... was the last straw that made me abandon the service and
   publish this pamphlet.”

“Thisclownish tour,” writes the old civil servant,
   “this journey so similar to that made by Catherine the Great to the south
   of Russia, with Mr. Schumann, the Resettlement and Land Administrator of
   Tomsk Gubernia, playing the role of Potyomkin on instructions from
   St. Petersburg ... was the last straw that made me abandon the service and
   publish this pamphlet.”

Poor,well-intentioned official—it was too much for him!

Hereis a picture of the resettlement muddle at the time of the
greatest wave of settlers.

“Thelands allotted were not ready, the roads to them
   had not been laid, the resettlement centres were only just being
   built.... Then people began settling of their own accord in surveyed forest
   areas that took their fancy, and seizing plots leased from the state,
   reserve plots that had at some earlier date been set aside for the Siberian
   estates of the nobility, etc.; and then, of course, began the expulsion of
   these illegal settlers, accompanied by a series of sad and often cruel
   scenes that it would be superfluous to describe.”  The resettlement
   officers were compelled to “tear to pieces areas of state forest that had
   been surveyed only the day before”. “They seized the land piecemeal, took
   whatever they first laid eyes on, anything so long as they could
   accommodate, get rid of, the scores of emaciated exhausted people hanging
   around the resettlement centre and standing for long hours outside the
   resettlement office, people who for some unknown reason invade the gubernia
   municipal offices in crowds and, in general, do not leave a single
   government office in peace.”

“Thelands allotted were not ready, the roads to them
   had not been laid, the resettlement centres were only just being
   built.... Then people began settling of their own accord in surveyed forest
   areas that took their fancy, and seizing plots leased from the state,
   reserve plots that had at some earlier date been set aside for the Siberian
   estates of the nobility, etc.; and then, of course, began the expulsion of
   these illegal settlers, accompanied by a series of sad and often cruel
   scenes that it would be superfluous to describe.”  The resettlement
   officers were compelled to “tear to pieces areas of state forest that had
   been surveyed only the day before”. “They seized the land piecemeal, took
   whatever they first laid eyes on, anything so long as they could
   accommodate, get rid of, the scores of emaciated exhausted people hanging
   around the resettlement centre and standing for long hours outside the
   resettlement office, people who for some unknown reason invade the gubernia
   municipal offices in crowds and, in general, do not leave a single
   government office in peace.”

“Manymillions of rubles” are being embezzled and wasted. “One
conclusion that suggests itself”, writes the author, “is the need to
transfer the resettlement scheme to the future Siberian Zemstvo.” This
na\"ive, “honest-minded” Russian official believes that this threadbare
cloak can be patched up ... with a Zemstvo.

Hereis a picture of the way the forests are being looked
after. Settlers “upon whom fortune had smiled” were permitted to sell
timber; they sold 300 dessiatines of mature building timber at 17 rubles
per dessiatine. Even by Siberian standards a dessiatine of mature building
timber is worth, at the very least, about 200 rubles. Another picture:
settlers sold the contractor Zhogolyov 25,000 railway sleepers at four
kopeks each. He paid 5 kopeks for felling, 25 kopeks for removal from the
forest and 10 kopeks each for transport by steamer, and received80 kopeks a sleeperfrom the treasury.... There you have Octobrist
capitalism in the epoch of primitive accumulation, and it lives comfortably
side by side with the Purishkeviches and the Purishkevichism of Russian
life!

Hereis a series of pictures of land settlement. Minusinsk Uyezd, the
“Siberian Italy”. The old inhabitants of Minusinsk received four
dessiatines each and “came to know the sacred rights of property”. At the
same time they were banned from using tens of thousands of dessiatines of
the best land.

“Inrecent times, this Italy, because of the general
   organisation of state economy, has been very regularly visited by, to use
   the official expression, ‘crop failures’ ....”“...InYeniseisk Uyezd there is the famous Ob-Yenisei
   Canal, that has for a number of years duly devoured a good many millions
   from the treasury, but has not thereby got itself into a decent condition
   fitting it for the transport of goods, since it was dug in a place where it
   should not have been dug“Kurinskyresettlement area ... is made up of lands that
   belong ed to non-Russians around the Altai Salt Refinery. The non-Russians
   had a tough time of it after their land had been taken away from them, but
   the settlers had a worse time—the local water was quite unsuitable for
   drinking. Nor did well-digging produce any results. Then the resettlement
   administration started drilling and drilled down to water that was saltier
   still. The settlers now drive seven or eight versts to the Yenisei from the
   village for water, so everything is satisfactory’....”

“Inrecent times, this Italy, because of the general
   organisation of state economy, has been very regularly visited by, to use
   the official expression, ‘crop failures’ ....”

“...InYeniseisk Uyezd there is the famous Ob-Yenisei
   Canal, that has for a number of years duly devoured a good many millions
   from the treasury, but has not thereby got itself into a decent condition
   fitting it for the transport of goods, since it was dug in a place where it
   should not have been dug

“Kurinskyresettlement area ... is made up of lands that
   belong ed to non-Russians around the Altai Salt Refinery. The non-Russians
   had a tough time of it after their land had been taken away from them, but
   the settlers had a worse time—the local water was quite unsuitable for
   drinking. Nor did well-digging produce any results. Then the resettlement
   administration started drilling and drilled down to water that was saltier
   still. The settlers now drive seven or eight versts to the Yenisei from the
   village for water, so everything is satisfactory’....”

...Avery valuable stand of pine had been completely eaten away by the
pine moth. When the trouble began the forest warden had tosend a
written applicationasking for credit. While the correspondence and
negotiations with St. Petersburg proceeded, the timber was
ruined.... “Every thing that is usually called forestry,” writes the old
warden, “has been totally abandoned.”

Peopleof any integrity are squeezed out of the civil service world by
informers (p. 118) and the “higher authorities” cut short foresters who
have thirty-five years’ service behind them with roars of “Silence!” if
they dare to tell the truth (p. 121). “A base and sordid period,” says
the good Mr. Komarov, indignantly, who suggests this “period” began when
a “good” boss was changed for a bad one.

Theauthor summarises his illustrations as follows:

“Ifall I have said sounds like so many anecdotes, then
   they are anecdotes from a reality that Russian constitutional—save the
   mark!—life has accustomed us to; and is not the whole of our present-day
   Russian life one long and rather unpleasant anecdote?”

“Ifall I have said sounds like so many anecdotes, then
   they are anecdotes from a reality that Russian constitutional—save the
   mark!—life has accustomed us to; and is not the whole of our present-day
   Russian life one long and rather unpleasant anecdote?”

Withregard to the settlers that are returning, Mr. Komarov ridicules
the assertion of some “bold” medical man that they constitute no more
than 6 per cent. We have quoted exact figures on this question above.

“TheRussian landowners, more than anybody, are very,
   very interested in this [in the number of settlers returning],” writes
   Mr. Komarov. “This is understandable: those returning are the sort that
   are destined to play a terrible role in the future. The man who is
   returning is not the one who all his life has been a farm labourer and is
   no longer accustomed to that which gave him, like Antaeus of old, gigantic,
   incredible strength. The man who is returning is the one who, until
   recently, was a property-owner, a man who never dreamed that he and the
   land could exist apart. This man is justifiably indignant, to him it is a
   mortal offence that he has not been provided for, but, on the contrary,
   that he and his family have been ruined and transformed from farmers and
   growers of corn into people of no consequence; this man is a menace to any
   political system, no matter what it be. And the best minds, those that have
   seen the light since 1905, are paying due consideration to this.”

“TheRussian landowners, more than anybody, are very,
   very interested in this [in the number of settlers returning],” writes
   Mr. Komarov. “This is understandable: those returning are the sort that
   are destined to play a terrible role in the future. The man who is
   returning is not the one who all his life has been a farm labourer and is
   no longer accustomed to that which gave him, like Antaeus of old, gigantic,
   incredible strength. The man who is returning is the one who, until
   recently, was a property-owner, a man who never dreamed that he and the
   land could exist apart. This man is justifiably indignant, to him it is a
   mortal offence that he has not been provided for, but, on the contrary,
   that he and his family have been ruined and transformed from farmers and
   growers of corn into people of no consequence; this man is a menace to any
   political system, no matter what it be. And the best minds, those that have
   seen the light since 1905, are paying due consideration to this.”

Inthe spring of 1910, the author visited a Marshal of the
Nobility[3]in European Russia; he was a man of conservative convictions
who enjoyed the author’s trust and esteem.

“‘Weare considering it, indeed we are,’ he
   told me. ‘It is not for nothing that we have fled from the country into the
   town. Themuzhik glowers at us like a wild beast. The young people are almost all
   hooligans, and now there are these people coming back from you in Siberia
   who have nothing to lose.’“Iunderstood dear Pyotr Fyodorovich best of all,”
   continues kindly Mr. Komarov, “when among others who came to me for
   information ‘about the lands in Siberia’ was one of the forgotten friends
   of my childhood, one with whom I had played tip-cat and other games and
   with whom I had later taken part in fist-fights. Alas, he was no longer my
   former companion in the village fist-fights but a respect able-looking
   muzhik with a big beard with silver threads in it and a bald patch exposing
   half his pate. We had a talk, recalled old times and I mentioned 1905. I
   must mention that our uyezd was one of those that had been particularly
   brightly illuminated by the ruddy glow of burning landowners’ mansions and
   ruined estates, and I for my part made a quite natural reproach to my
   friend, as far as I remember in the following terms:“‘Thedevilalone knows what you people got up
   to in 1905! You could have got much better conditions....’“WhenI said this, I did not have in mind the theory of
   the agrarian question as propounded by the Social-Democrats and
   Socialist-Revolutionaries which, to anybody in any degree acquainted with
   political economy, somehow sounds completely inacceptable; I was given this
   answer:“‘Howtrueyour words are.... You’re quite
   right.... That was not what we should have done....’“‘Thereyou are, I said soothingly, glad that
   we had understood each other.“‘Yes,it’s true enough.... We made a fine
   blunder.... We shouldn’t have let anyone go....’“‘Whatdo you mean by that?’“‘Imean we should have gone through with it,
   ... given all of them short shrift....’“Andas he spoke his face was smiling and kindly, there
   were attractive wrinkles around his bright, gentle, childishly naive and
   smiling eyes“ButI admit quite frankly that a cold shiver ran down
   my back and the hair on my head must have stood on end; if that was how the
   gentle ones felt about it, what could we expect from those who were coming
   back, those who had sold their land and were ruined for ever?“Yes,indeed, the ‘banking on the strong’ that was
   presented to Russia by the late Prime Minister and the Octobrists, may, as
   time goes on and the full effect of the resettlement muddle is felt, bring
   many horrors into our lives” (p. 75).

“‘Weare considering it, indeed we are,’ he
   told me. ‘It is not for nothing that we have fled from the country into the
   town. Themuzhik glowers at us like a wild beast. The young people are almost all
   hooligans, and now there are these people coming back from you in Siberia
   who have nothing to lose.’

“Iunderstood dear Pyotr Fyodorovich best of all,”
   continues kindly Mr. Komarov, “when among others who came to me for
   information ‘about the lands in Siberia’ was one of the forgotten friends
   of my childhood, one with whom I had played tip-cat and other games and
   with whom I had later taken part in fist-fights. Alas, he was no longer my
   former companion in the village fist-fights but a respect able-looking
   muzhik with a big beard with silver threads in it and a bald patch exposing
   half his pate. We had a talk, recalled old times and I mentioned 1905. I
   must mention that our uyezd was one of those that had been particularly
   brightly illuminated by the ruddy glow of burning landowners’ mansions and
   ruined estates, and I for my part made a quite natural reproach to my
   friend, as far as I remember in the following terms:

“‘Thedevilalone knows what you people got up
   to in 1905! You could have got much better conditions....’

“WhenI said this, I did not have in mind the theory of
   the agrarian question as propounded by the Social-Democrats and
   Socialist-Revolutionaries which, to anybody in any degree acquainted with
   political economy, somehow sounds completely inacceptable; I was given this
   answer:

“‘Howtrueyour words are.... You’re quite
   right.... That was not what we should have done....’

“‘Thereyou are, I said soothingly, glad that
   we had understood each other.

“‘Yes,it’s true enough.... We made a fine
   blunder.... We shouldn’t have let anyone go....’

“‘Whatdo you mean by that?’

“‘Imean we should have gone through with it,
   ... given all of them short shrift....’

“Andas he spoke his face was smiling and kindly, there
   were attractive wrinkles around his bright, gentle, childishly naive and
   smiling eyes

“ButI admit quite frankly that a cold shiver ran down
   my back and the hair on my head must have stood on end; if that was how the
   gentle ones felt about it, what could we expect from those who were coming
   back, those who had sold their land and were ruined for ever?

“Yes,indeed, the ‘banking on the strong’ that was
   presented to Russia by the late Prime Minister and the Octobrists, may, as
   time goes on and the full effect of the resettlement muddle is felt, bring
   many horrors into our lives” (p. 75).

Wewill stop here, at this conversation between a kindly, peaceable
intellectual and a gentle, mild, na\"ive, respect able-looking, bald-headed
muzhik.

[1]Elevenmonths. —Lenin

[2]Rus(Russia) (Molva[Tidings],Novaya Rus[New Russia],Oko[The
Eye])—the various names under which a bourgeois-liberal newspaper
was published in St. Petersburg from 1903 to 1910.

[3]Marshalof the Nobility—the elected representative of the
nobility of a gubernia or uyezd. He was in charge of all the affairs of the
nobility, occupied an influential position in the administration and took
the chair at meetings of the Zemstvo.